Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  “We’ll talk about it later,” I said. The only green I wanted to be thinking about was the island looming before us. “I’d like for us all to relax. And speaking of that, where’s Henry and your little sister? I haven’t seen them since the ferry left the dock.”

  My middle son, Henry, was as ambitious as his brothers, but in a different way. He had also worked as a stockbroker, but recently put his mini-fortune into stocks and securities. His brothers lately call him “dewdrop-per” for spending his days sleeping and not having a job. He enjoys telling people he doesn’t have to work because his money is working for him. In a sense, he’s right. When General Motors issued stock, I also pulled my own savings from the bank and put it all into stock. Everyone was doing it. But then I remembered what my mother once told me, that just because all the other kids are jumping off a cliff, it doesn’t mean you should too. So just before this trip, I pulled my savings out of the stock market. That way, if I chose to purchase land on Sanibel, I had money to play with.

  “I’ll go find them, Mother,” said Charles.

  “I’ll go with him,” said Jonathon.

  “Thanks,” I said, watching the way the women were looking at my grown boys as they disappeared to the other side of the ferry. They kept in good shape, dressed fashionably, and spoke properly to women. And they were handsome—each one of them. I was thrilled when Henry inherited his great-grandfather Milton’s hazel eyes. I hadn’t ever seen those eyes, but Grandmalia described them in her stories, saying they were a sparkling brown. When Henry was little I told him where he got his eyes and, horrified, he asked, “Is Milton going to want them back?”

  Henry had eyes for one thing, and it wasn’t writing poetry like his great-granddaddy, but rather music. He loved playing the trumpet. He also loved drinking while doing so, and I could always tell by the way those eyes flickered with green that he had been drinking. I hoped no one else noticed. I didn’t want my son getting into any trouble, but those eyes of his worried me.

  “Mom, we found her,” Jonathon called out to me.

  “Was she with Henry?”

  “Sort of. I think you should come see for yourself.”

  As I made my way to the other side of the ferry, I could hear music above the sound of the engine, and I heard people laughing and clapping, and when I saw they were doing so for Marlena, I stopped in my tracks. There she was, fourteen years old, dancing the Charleston, with her hair bobbing about her shoulders, wearing a skirt her brothers thought was too short but she thought was not short enough. And Henry was playing his trumpet passionately with his eyes closed.

  “She looks like a miniature version of you,” Charles said as I joined him and Marlena’s crowd of admirers. “Only you never laugh or dance anymore, Mother.”

  “I’m too old for any of that,” I said. But I knew that wasn’t true. If I was young enough to have a fourteen year-old daughter, I also had to be young enough to still live life to the fullest and have fun.

  My eyes followed my daughter dancing the Charleston. How did she do that after only taking ballet? I did take her to see The Jazz Singer and she insisted on seeing it fourteen times more after that. I glanced away from her and out over the railing of the ferry, where I thought I spotted a shiny object bobbing up and down in the water. If only I were thirty years younger, I would dive overboard and swim over to it to be sure it was really mine. And then I’d grab onto my heart and swim with it to shore. There I’d find the first man it ever belonged to.

  My eyes returned to Marlena. She was every bit beautiful, from her wide, oval blue eyes to the charismatic and charming nose she inherited from her great-grandmother, Dahlia. I guess Grandmalia had been right about that nose and how it skips around the family, showing up on the fourth babies. It pained me horribly when Marlena grumbled about her nose because to me it represented where she came from and the ancestors she was connected to. She was so beautiful that heads turned and watched her, and that nose of hers only added charisma to her face—and it softened her piercing eyes.

  Maybe I’m not that old, I thought as I watched her dance. If Jaden is still around, he’d be two years older than me. And I had aged gracefully over the years, with just four wrinkles big enough to count and they were worth it, for my children gave them to me as gifts. Jaden would have a few lines, but knowing him, or the boy he once was, he’d try telling me that wrinkles on a woman’s face are the tracks of where she has been and that they’re beautiful in a natural sort of way and purposeful too, reminders of the life she has lived. He had been the sort of person to make anyone feel better, even a wounded pelican. He had to be married. I’d find out soon enough.

  “I can hardly look at her without smiling,” Jonathon said as he marveled at his baby sister. “Look at her. She’s a natural entertainer.”

  Just then Marlena stopped the Charleston, and a beautiful woman in her thirties, smoking a cigarette in a long, decorative holder, reached out from the crowd and pulled her close.

  When Henry, who was putting his trumpet away right beside his little sister, didn’t notice, I feared he had been sipping from his secret stash of liquor again. I started for where the stranger was whispering in my daughter’s ear, but Charles held me back. “She’s fine, Mother. She’s a small bird with big wings. We’re watching her closely,” he said.

  Then the woman kissed Marlena on the forehead and continued talking to her.

  “Marlena,” I called out.

  She looked around, disoriented, and when she spotted me in the crowd, she said, “Just a minute, Mama. This lady is telling me something important.”

  “Go get her, Charles,” I said. “What’s that woman saying to her?”

  Charles walked over, and Jonathon followed, but Marlena turned her back to them as if she didn’t want them butting in. I laughed when Charles swept her petite body up in his arms and carried her over to me. She was mad, but her dramatic side continued to flare as she swung her head back while in the arms of her brother and blew a kiss to the woman who was still smiling.

  The woman held her finger up to her lips as if to say, “Shhh, don’t tell,” then she waved to my daughter.

  When the ferry touched the dock and people started rushing about with anticipation, I nearly did the Charleston myself. Charles put Marlena down, and she and I held playful hands as we joined a line of people exiting the ferry. We bumped into the woman who had been whispering into Marlena’s ear and she winked at my daughter.

  “What was that woman whispering to you about?” I asked.

  “It’s a secret,” she answered coyly.

  I shook my head and looked her straight in the eyes. “I’m your mother,” I said. “And that woman was a stranger. You will tell me what she said.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “It’s none of your beeswax,” she said, sounding way too old for her age and making me feel too old to deal with her.

  “Marlena,” I scolded. “A young lady respects her mother.”

  She rolled her eyes and said, “If I tell you, it will ruin my destiny. If I tell you, I won’t be famous.”

  “What on God’s Earth are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fine,” I snapped. “If you don’t tell me everything right this moment, you won’t get to search for shells or walk the beach or do anything with us as a family, do you hear?”

  By this time we were stepping foot off the ferry, and I was questioning God for giving me a daughter so late in life. I did that from time to time, whenever she acted up. Most of the time, though, she didn’t act like this and I thanked God for giving me a daughter so late in life.

  When I noticed her eyes moving about in a creative way, as if she were thinking about the seashell mirror she wanted to make, I knew she was about to give in and tell me what the woman had said to her.

  “The lady told me that one day I would be famous.”

  “Famous?” asked Jonathon, walki
ng close behind us and listening unbeknownst to us. “For what?”

  Marlena stopped at the end of the dock, just before stepping foot onto the east end of Ferry Road. “The lady on the ferry liked the way I danced. And when I finished, she said that I would be famous, more than Lucky Lindy himself, and she said that I would be rich, not from the stock market, but from my fame. Do you think I could be richer than all three of my brothers?” She looked at me for the answer. “I don’t doubt, Marlena, that you’re just as adventurous and invincible as Lindbergh,” said Charles. “But tell us, what would you be famous for?”

  “She said I would be a famous actress in Hollywood.”

  We all raised an eyebrow. “It’s a promising industry,” said Henry. “Hollywood’s been mounting multimillion-dollar productions to meet insatiable demand for movies.”

  “Yep, and I’m going there,” said Marlena. “As soon as I turn eighteen.”

  “You along with a bunch of lonely, bored, discontented housewives in America. I hear so many have been up and leaving their lives that there’s charity funds set up to support these women once they get there,” said Jonathon.

  “You hear that, Marlena?” said Charles. “Hollywood is just a far-off patch of California. Go for the sure thing when you get big. Go for where the money is. Marry a rich man like Jonathon or me. Don’t marry a Henry who drinks away all his money.”

  “Bushwa,” Henry said.

  “Watch your language,” I scolded.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Henry said, patting me on the back, and then he turned to his brothers and said in a lowered voice, “Cut the crap. You’re both bootleggers and you know it. And regarding Hollywood, Marlena, it’s not all bad. I enjoy what I’ve seen so far.”

  “Marlena,” I said, squeezing her hand. “First and foremost, don’t listen to your brothers. Don’t marry a man for his money. Marry the man you love. And secondly, dear, Hollywood is too far away. I’d miss you horribly. The only entertaining you need to do is for your family. You stick by me and keep me smiling, you hear?”

  “Okay,” she answered, her eyes moving on to something else. “Can we go into that store over there and see if they’ve got any chocolate?” She was used to getting what she wanted so, before I could answer, she took off running ahead toward Bailey’s General Store.

  “They didn’t have stores like this back when I lived here,” I noted. “And we certainly didn’t have anything like that,” I added as we stopped to check out the 1926 Model-T Ford delivery truck parked in front.

  I don’t think any of my children could survive an hour without spending money, so inside the store they bought English Herb Soap, Mrs. Stevens’ Candies, and Hershey’s Chocolate before I pulled each one of them out the door.

  I felt eager, but I couldn’t tell the kids why. I couldn’t tell them about the boy I once loved and the man I wanted to find. They wouldn’t understand. Kids want their mommy loving no one but their daddy, I think, even years after their daddy has passed.

  Lydia

  That was all that Marlena sent me, and it was fine. Our plane was about to land, and now I knew who the stranger was that long ago had planted powerful seeds in the ears of a little girl.

  I closed the journal and closed my eyes, wondering whether Ava met up with Jaden and whether he still loved her and whether the two of them spent the rest of their lives happily ever after together on the island. I would soon find out.

  XLV

  JACK AND I WERE happy to see Marlena. She looked more beautiful at fifty-three than ever, and she claimed it was because she was doing what she wanted to be doing. After directing her last film, she returned home and started working diligently on ideas for writing a screenplay.

  “Lydia, if you stay here to live, you can write the novel, and I’ll write the screenplay.”

  “I don’t know if I can write a novel.”

  “Oh, come on!” she said. “Am I going to have to go out and have you build another snowwoman in the sand?” We both laughed. “Of course you can, and, besides, it would be easy. We can base it on my mother’s journals.

  She would have loved the idea. I just know it.”

  “Let’s just see how my encounter with Josh goes tomorrow,” I said. “One thing at a time.”

  “Grandmarlena,” Jack called as he came running into the room. “Can I have some ice cream now?”

  “Grandmarlena?” I asked, looking over at Marlena, and then I laughed for a good five minutes.

  But that night in bed, I wasn’t laughing at all, and I could hardly sleep. Come morning I’d be facing Josh, and thoughts of it kept me awake as if I had downed gallons of caffeine. Maybe it was all a big mistake, one I would regret.

  Jack was sound asleep in the bed beside me as I sat up and looked around the yellow room where we were sleeping. Then I walked over to the desk and opened the left drawer and pulled out matches I had seen in there before. I lit a candle and opened Ava’s journal. I didn’t think Marlena would mind my reading forward. I needed to know whether or not Ava met up with Jaden and how it all went.

  Ava

  We stayed at an inn located on the Gulf of Mexico where each night we fell asleep to the whisper of the sea, and in the early mornings we sat on the verandah drinking java and looking out at the sea we had heard the night before. I wanted our time on the island to go by slowly as a manatee roaming up the Florida peninsula, but of course it did the opposite. It sped by like a dolphin riding the bow waves of a ship.

  The boys woke late and spent their time fishing in the bay or golfing at a nine-hole miniature-style course while Marlena, and I rode bicycles, attended events at the Community House, walked the beach, and went for tea over at Miss Charlotta’s Tea Room near the ferry landing. The menu was simple, and the room was filled with residents and visitors alike, and it was a cozy place for the two of us to talk.

  “When you were my age,” Marlena said as she poured a bee’s hive worth of honey into her tea, “what did you want to be when you grew up?”

  I waited for the server to pour hot water into my cup. “A fiction writer,” I said once the waitress left for another table. “Like Louisa May Alcott. Remember I gave you that book of hers? She was my favorite author when I was around your age. My mother liked her too.”

  “Is that why you get sad?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, aware that she saw my spells as a mystery she wanted to solve.

  “That you’ve never become a fiction writer like her. Is that why you get sad?”

  “Oh,” I said, sipping my tea, unaware until now that she had noticed my extended naps and quieter periods in recent months. I took two more sips, and then searched her eyes, hoping she had moved on.

  “I don’t like when you get sad, Mama.”

  I still did not know what to say. I didn’t know myself why I got sad at times, just that I remember my own mother also getting sad, and as I looked my daughter in the eyes, I could only hope her eyes would never grow sad like ours.

  “Am I really sad all that often?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Especially in the winter. I hate when you’re sad.”

  I blew on my tea, then took a long, slow sip, put my cup down on its dainty matching plate, then picked it up again and took another sip. “It has nothing to do with me not becoming a fiction writer.” I laughed at her simple innocence. “Writing my columns and magazine articles has been just as rewarding to me,” I said. “And so has keeping a journal. I’ve kept one since I first learned to write, you know. It’s long enough to be a novel by now. Three, probably.”

  “Yeah, but no one ever reads journals. They just sit around in some hiding spot, like under your bed, and even then, when someone finds one, there’s usually a lock on it.”

  I looked at her suspiciously. “You haven’t, have you?”

  “What?”

  “You know, been trying to read my journals, young lady.”

  “No, Mama,” she insisted. “I would never do such a thing. You tell me all y
our good stories anyway.”

  Thank Heavens, I thought, for I wouldn’t want my daughter knowing how I once snuck out and how I married as an escape and as the only option I thought I had but then grew to love her father later and how he had a secret gambling problem and how even on this very vacation I had, every chance I got, been secretly sitting out on that verandah or lying on the hammock in the grass until wee hours talking and reuniting with someone from my past. How could she possibly understand that my love for Jaden felt as old and precious as the Caloosahatchee River? These were things my children didn’t know about me, things they wouldn’t understand. But some day Marlena might, and, then, if she ever went through anything remotely similar, I’d want her to know that she was not alone in the world, that there was someone who understood.

  “Do me a favor,” I said after giving it thought. “One day, a long, long time from today, if you and I are ever far away from each other, break open my journals and read them, okay?” She stared at me as if I were a ghost. “I mean it,” I continued. “But not until you’re at least twenty-one, promise me?”

  She nodded. “Do you want me to lock them up after I read them?”

  “No,” I said. “Share them with someone, maybe a nice girl like yourself who you think might appreciate them as you did, but only after I’m gone someday, okay?”

  “I don’t like to think about you being gone,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m talking about when I’m one hundred and fifty, and, believe me, by then, you’ll want me gone. Don’t worry. I won’t go before that.” We laughed and talked more that day and the next few about her dreams of becoming a Hollywood movie star and inviting me to the premiers and making more money than all her brothers combined.

  There were things my children didn’t know about me, and as we went to watch the sunset one night at an area of beach located between the two islands, I considered telling them what I had been up to.